Chibi

Assembling and Setting Up the Freakduino-Chibi

Things have been pretty hectic last week with the intro of the Freakduino-Chibi boards and I was overwhelmed for a bit. However things are starting to stabilize and I've had the chance to put together an assembly tutorial for the boards. Actually, this tutorial is not only about how to assemble the kit portion of the board, but also how to set it up so that you can start to communicate wirelessly with it and make sure the board/s work.

I've also included a small tutorial towards the end that demonstrates the technique I use to solder through hole components. I debated about including it because there's a risk that people that try it out might burn their fingers. But I decided to include it because it's kind of a neat way to do through hole parts. Through hole parts can be a pain because you have to simultaneously hold the part in place, flip the board over (or tilt it at an angle), and then solder down the part. I always found this irritating so I tried different ways to get around this. When you're soldering through hole parts onto 50+ boards, you naturally start looking for shortcuts. Anyways, I like the technique that I'm showing because you don't need any type of fixture to hold a board or tilt it, and it lets me fix all the parts in place and then turn the board over and solder down everything in one go. Not sure if you'll like it as much as I do, but just thought I'd throw it out there in case someone finds it helpful.